Project based learning activities as a means of adapting conventional curricula to the demands of the 21st century aeronautical engineer: The design and building of the EYEFLY 1.

In this paper we report the process of designing and building the EYEFLY 1, a real UAS platform which has just performed its maiden flight. For the development of this aircraft, 30 groups of students from successive years at the Escuela Universitaria de Ingeniería Técnica Aeronáutica (EUITA) of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) carried out their compulsory End of Degree Project as a coordinated Project Based learning activity. Our conclusions clearly indicate that Project Based Learning activities can provide a valid complement to more conventional, theoretically-based, teaching methods. The combination of both approaches will allow us to maintain traditional but well-tested methods for providing our students with a sound knowledge of fundamental engineering disciplines and, at the same time, to introduce our students to exciting and relevant engineering situations and sceneries where social and business skills, such as communication skills, team-working or decision-taking, can be put into practice.

Statistical Machine Learning for Automatic Assessment of Physical Activity Intensity Using Multi-axial Accelerometry and Heart Rate

This work explores the automatic recognition of physical activity intensity patterns from multi-axial accelerometry and heart rate signals. Data collection was carried out in free-living conditions and in three controlled gymnasium circuits, for a total amount of 179.80 h of data divided into: sedentary situations (65.5%), light-to-moderate activity (17.6%) and vigorous exercise (16.9%). The proposed machine learning algorithms comprise the following steps: time-domain feature definition, standardization and PCA projection, unsupervised clustering (by k-means and GMM) and a HMM to account for long-term temporal trends. Performance was evaluated by 30 runs of a 10-fold cross-validation. Both k-means and GMM-based approaches yielded high overall accuracy (86.97% and 85.03%, respectively) and, given the imbalance of the dataset, meritorious F-measures (up to 77.88%) for non-sedentary cases. Classification errors tended to be concentrated around transients, what constrains their practical impact. Hence, we consider our proposal to be suitable for 24 h-based monitoring of physical activity in ambulatory scenarios and a first step towards intensity-specific energy expenditure estimators

Enhancing web-based learning resources with quizzes through an Authoring Tool and an Audience Response System

Quizzes are among the most widely used resources in web-based education due to their many benefits. However, educators need suitable authoring tools that can be used to create reusable quizzes and to enhance existing materials with them. On the other hand, if teachers use Audience Response Systems (ARSs) they can get instant feedback from their students and thereby enhance their instruction. This paper presents an online authoring tool for creating reusable quizzes and enhancing existing learning resources with them, and a web-based ARS that enables teachers to launch the created quizzes and get instant feedback from the class. Both the authoring tool and the ARS were evaluated. The evaluation of the authoring tool showed that educators can effectively enhance existing learning resources in an easy way by creating and adding quizzes using that tool. Besides, the different factors that assure the reusability of the created quizzes are also exposed. Finally, the evaluation of the developed ARS showed an excellent acceptance of the system by teachers and students, and also it indicated that teachers found the system easy to set up and use in their classrooms.

Response threshold models, stochastic learning automata and ant colony optimization-based decentralized self-coordination algorithms for heterogeneous multi-tasks distribution in multi-robot systems

In recent decades, there has been an increasing interest in systems comprised of several autonomous mobile robots, and as a result, there has been a substantial amount of development in the eld of Articial Intelligence, especially in Robotics. There are several studies in the literature by some researchers from the scientic community that focus on the creation of intelligent machines and devices capable to imitate the functions and movements of living beings. Multi-Robot Systems (MRS) can often deal with tasks that are dicult, if not impossible, to be accomplished by a single robot. In the context of MRS, one of the main challenges is the need to control, coordinate and synchronize the operation of multiple robots to perform a specic task. This requires the development of new strategies and methods which allow us to obtain the desired system behavior in a formal and concise way. This PhD thesis aims to study the coordination of multi-robot systems, in particular, addresses the problem of the distribution of heterogeneous multi-tasks. The main interest in these systems is to understand how from simple rules inspired by the division of labor in social insects, a group of robots can perform tasks in an organized and coordinated way. We are mainly interested on truly distributed or decentralized solutions in which the robots themselves, autonomously and in an individual manner, select a particular task so that all tasks are optimally distributed. In general, to perform the multi-tasks distribution among a team of robots, they have to synchronize their actions and exchange information. Under this approach we can speak of multi-tasks selection instead of multi-tasks assignment, which means, that the agents or robots select the tasks instead of being assigned a task by a central controller. The key element in these algorithms is the estimation ix of the stimuli and the adaptive update of the thresholds. This means that each robot performs this estimate locally depending on the load or the number of pending tasks to be performed. In addition, it is very interesting the evaluation of the results in function in each approach, comparing the results obtained by the introducing noise in the number of pending loads, with the purpose of simulate the robot's error in estimating the real number of pending tasks. The main contribution of this thesis can be found in the approach based on self-organization and division of labor in social insects. An experimental scenario for the coordination problem among multiple robots, the robustness of the approaches and the generation of dynamic tasks have been presented and discussed. The particular issues studied are: Threshold models: It presents the experiments conducted to test the response threshold model with the objective to analyze the system performance index, for the problem of the distribution of heterogeneous multitasks in multi-robot systems; also has been introduced additive noise in the number of pending loads and has been generated dynamic tasks over time. Learning automata methods: It describes the experiments to test the learning automata-based probabilistic algorithms. The approach was tested to evaluate the system performance index with additive noise and with dynamic tasks generation for the same problem of the distribution of heterogeneous multi-tasks in multi-robot systems. Ant colony optimization: The goal of the experiments presented is to test the ant colony optimization-based deterministic algorithms, to achieve the distribution of heterogeneous multi-tasks in multi-robot systems. In the experiments performed, the system performance index is evaluated by introducing additive noise and dynamic tasks generation over time.

Development and Assessment of the Competence Creativity Applied to Technical Drawing

The results obtained after incorporating the competence “creativity” to the subject Technical Drawing of the first course of the Degree in Forestry, Technical University of Madrid, are presented in this study.At first, learning activities which could serve two functions at the same time -developing students’ creativity and developing other specific competences of the subject- were considered. Besides, changes in the assessment procedure were made and a method which analyzes two aspects of the assessment of the competence creativity was established. On the one hand, the products are evaluated by analyzing the outcomes obtained by students in the essays suggested and by establishing a parameter to assess the creativity expressed in those essays. On the other, an assessment of the student is directly carried out through a psychometric test which has been previously chosen by the team.Moreover, these results can be applied to similar or could be of general application

Contribución al diseño y modelado de plataformas de gestión e impartición de titulaciones conjuntas en ambientes de e-learning

Las Tecnologías de la Información y de las Comunicaciones, ofrecen una buena oportunidad para el desarrollo de comunidades virtuales de aprendizaje, especialmente en el caso de las titulaciones conjuntas entre organizaciones. Estas comunidades permiten a las organizaciones aprovechar mejor las oportunidades de aprendizaje que brindan las tecnologías de Internet, aportando mejores contenidos y experiencias de aprendizaje (Recursos de aprendizaje) tanto para los profesores como para los alumnos. Sin embargo, actualmente no existe una tecnología clara con la que poder federar plataformas de gestión e impartición de titulaciones virtuales (LMS), con la que dar un adecuado soporte a las titulaciones conjuntas. En este trabajo, se presenta una metodología y una arquitectura de federación de plataformas LMS para poder gestionar titulaciones conjuntas en ambiente de e-learning. Actualmente, existe escaso conocimiento acerca de los problemas que están imposibilitando la utilización de estos escenarios. Por ello, este trabajo se presenta como una solución para los miembros de la comunidad (directores, docentes, investigadores y estudiantes), ofreciendo un marco conceptual, que ayuda a entender estos escenarios e identifica los requisitos de diseño que son útiles para generar servicios de aprendizaje accesibles a los miembros de la comunidad (Grid de recursos de aprendizaje) y para integrar los LMS en una nube de titulaciones conjuntas en ambientes de e-learning. Así mismo, en el presente documento se presentan varias experiencias, en las que se han implementado comunidades virtuales de aprendizaje en la ciudad de Cartagena de Indias (Colombia), que han servido para inspirar y validar la solución propuesta en este trabajo. ABSTRACT Information and communication technologies offer a great opportunity for the development of virtual learning communities, like as joint degrees between Organizations. Virtual Learning Communities allow organizations to be more cooperative during training activities via the Internet, with the provision of their learning expertise (learning resource). Internet enables multiple organizations to share their learning expertise with others. In these cooperative knowledge spaces, each organization contributes with their partners providing learning resources that they offer to students and teachers. However, currently there is no clear technology with which to federate Learning Management Systems (LMS) to give adequate support to joint degrees. In this work, we present a description of the problems that would face the generation of the Joint degrees in e-learning environments. Currently little is known about the problems that prevent the formation of virtual learning communities generated from the experience contributed by multiple organizations, so, this work is important for community members (Directors, Teachers, Researchers and practitioners) because it offers a conceptual framework that helps understand these scenarios and can provide useful design requirements when generating learning services for the community (Grid of Learning Resources) and to integrate the LMS in a cloud of joint degrees in e-learning environments. We also propose various experiences in which virtual learning communities have been integrated in Cartagena de Indias (Colombia) which have served to inspire and validate the solution proposed in this paper.

Desarrollo de herramientas de autoevaluación de prácticas de procesado digital de la señal.

El objetivo de este proyecto es desarrollar un conjunto de herramientas de auto aprendizaje y autoevaluación del laboratorio de la asignatura "Procesado Digital de la Señal", perteneciente al plan de grado de la Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería y Sistemas de Telecomunicación de la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Con ello se pretende de mejorar el rendimiento académico de los alumnos en dicha asignatura y en la materia "Señales y Sistemas" en general. Para la realización de las prácticas se emplea Matlab, de modo que es necesario integrar esta herramienta en el laboratorio con MOODLE, plataforma de e-learning utilizada para la gestión de las asignaturas a nivel docente, para proporcionar material de estudio y programar actividades de aprendizaje y evaluación. Será fundamental el análisis de la integración de Matlab con MOODLE, de modo que en función de los resultados de los alumnos, se les propongan repeticiones de apartados erróneos, revisiones de resultados y otros aspectos, como autoaprendizaje y autoevaluación que permitan la obtención de las competencias y alcanzar los resultados de aprendizaje, y a los profesores que imparten la asignatura, como herramienta para detectar las deficiencias más significativas en la programación y en las metodologías empleadas en la asignatura para corregir las carencias de los alumnos. ABSTRACT: The aim of this project will be the development of self-learning and self- assessment lab tools for the course "Procesado Digital de la Señal" in order to improve student’s performance in that subject and in the matter "Señales y Sistemas " for grades taught at the Escuela Universitaria de Ingeniería Técnica de Telecomunicación of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid today. Matlab is used to perform laboratory practices of "Procesado Digital de la Señal “. Matlab is a numerical calculation program. A very powerful tool with a great mathematical processing performance level, so it is necessary to integrate this tool in the laboratory with MOODLE, the current e-learning platform used at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid for the management of teaching subjects to provide material and to program learning and assessment activities for students. It is therefore essential the analysis of the Matlab integration with Moodle. Thus, depending on the results and grades that students get along the way in the various activities evaluators should conduct, they propose, for example, repetitions of erroneous exercises, reviews of some results and other aspects such as self-learning and self-assessment. This would allow students to obtain the skills and learning to achieve the results set as a target. For teachers who teach the subject will also be a preview of the notes as these tools will be used to identify the most significant shortcomings both in programming and in the methodologies used in "Procesado Digital de la Señal " to act accordingly and correcting shortcomings of the enrolled students.

Machine Learning in Scientometrics

El aprendizaje automático y la cienciometría son las disciplinas científicas que se tratan en esta tesis. El aprendizaje automático trata sobre la construcción y el estudio de algoritmos que puedan aprender a partir de datos, mientras que la cienciometría se ocupa principalmente del análisis de la ciencia desde una perspectiva cuantitativa. Hoy en día, los avances en el aprendizaje automático proporcionan las herramientas matemáticas y estadísticas para trabajar correctamente con la gran cantidad de datos cienciométricos almacenados en bases de datos bibliográficas. En este contexto, el uso de nuevos métodos de aprendizaje automático en aplicaciones de cienciometría es el foco de atención de esta tesis doctoral. Esta tesis propone nuevas contribuciones en el aprendizaje automático que podrían arrojar luz sobre el área de la cienciometría. Estas contribuciones están divididas en tres partes: Varios modelos supervisados (in)sensibles al coste son aprendidos para predecir el éxito científico de los artículos y los investigadores. Los modelos sensibles al coste no están interesados en maximizar la precisión de clasificación, sino en la minimización del coste total esperado derivado de los errores ocasionados. En este contexto, los editores de revistas científicas podrían disponer de una herramienta capaz de predecir el número de citas de un artículo en el fututo antes de ser publicado, mientras que los comités de promoción podrían predecir el incremento anual del índice h de los investigadores en los primeros años. Estos modelos predictivos podrían allanar el camino hacia nuevos sistemas de evaluación. Varios modelos gráficos probabilísticos son aprendidos para explotar y descubrir nuevas relaciones entre el gran número de índices bibliométricos existentes. En este contexto, la comunidad científica podría medir cómo algunos índices influyen en otros en términos probabilísticos y realizar propagación de la evidencia e inferencia abductiva para responder a preguntas bibliométricas. Además, la comunidad científica podría descubrir qué índices bibliométricos tienen mayor poder predictivo. Este es un problema de regresión multi-respuesta en el que el papel de cada variable, predictiva o respuesta, es desconocido de antemano. Los índices resultantes podrían ser muy útiles para la predicción, es decir, cuando se conocen sus valores, el conocimiento de cualquier valor no proporciona información sobre la predicción de otros índices bibliométricos. Un estudio bibliométrico sobre la investigación española en informática ha sido realizado bajo la cultura de publicar o morir. Este estudio se basa en una metodología de análisis de clusters que caracteriza la actividad en la investigación en términos de productividad, visibilidad, calidad, prestigio y colaboración internacional. Este estudio también analiza los efectos de la colaboración en la productividad y la visibilidad bajo diferentes circunstancias. ABSTRACT Machine learning and scientometrics are the scientific disciplines which are covered in this dissertation. Machine learning deals with the construction and study of algorithms that can learn from data, whereas scientometrics is mainly concerned with the analysis of science from a quantitative perspective. Nowadays, advances in machine learning provide the mathematical and statistical tools for properly working with the vast amount of scientometrics data stored in bibliographic databases. In this context, the use of novel machine learning methods in scientometrics applications is the focus of attention of this dissertation. This dissertation proposes new machine learning contributions which would shed light on the scientometrics area. These contributions are divided in three parts: Several supervised cost-(in)sensitive models are learned to predict the scientific success of articles and researchers. Cost-sensitive models are not interested in maximizing classification accuracy, but in minimizing the expected total cost of the error derived from mistakes in the classification process. In this context, publishers of scientific journals could have a tool capable of predicting the citation count of an article in the future before it is published, whereas promotion committees could predict the annual increase of the h-index of researchers within the first few years. These predictive models would pave the way for new assessment systems. Several probabilistic graphical models are learned to exploit and discover new relationships among the vast number of existing bibliometric indices. In this context, scientific community could measure how some indices influence others in probabilistic terms and perform evidence propagation and abduction inference for answering bibliometric questions. Also, scientific community could uncover which bibliometric indices have a higher predictive power. This is a multi-output regression problem where the role of each variable, predictive or response, is unknown beforehand. The resulting indices could be very useful for prediction purposes, that is, when their index values are known, knowledge of any index value provides no information on the prediction of other bibliometric indices. A scientometric study of the Spanish computer science research is performed under the publish-or-perish culture. This study is based on a cluster analysis methodology which characterizes the research activity in terms of productivity, visibility, quality, prestige and international collaboration. This study also analyzes the effects of collaboration on productivity and visibility under different circumstances.

Una asignatura on-line de Historia de los Algoritmos

This paper describes the objectives, contents learning methodology and results of an on-line course about History of Algorithms for engineering students of the Polytechnic University of Madrid. This course is conducted in a virtual environment based on Moodle, with an educational model centered at student which includes a detailed planning of learning activities. . Our experience indicates that this subject is is highly motivating for students and the virtual environment facilitates competencies development.

Managing team learning in a Spanish commercial bank

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze how team management affects team-learning activities. Design/methodology/approach – The authors empirically study 68 teams as they operate in the natural business context of a major Spanish bank. Quantitative research utilizing multiple regression analyses is used to test hypotheses. Findings – The leadership behaviour (consideration, initiation of structure) displayed by the team leader plays a key role in facilitating team learning. Team leader behaviour characterised by consideration and in particular by initiation of structure are both positively related to team-learning activities. Cross-training of team members also contributes to team-learning behaviour. Research limitations/implications – A specific setting may limit the generalizability of findings. Further research may accordingly investigate to what extent these results can be generalized to other settings or other aspects of team learning. Practical implications – The leadership style adopted by the team leader, as well as cross-training of members, affect team-learning activities. These results link leadership theory to collective learning in teams and organizations, and suggest ways leaders can contribute to improved learning. Originality/value – The study provides new insight into how management of teams facilitates team-learning activities. While consideration is somewhat related to team learning, initiation of structure as well as cross-training appear as key variables.

An Online Course on the History of Algorithms.

This paper describes the objectives, content, learning methodology and results of an online course on the History of Algorithms for engineering students at Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM). This course is conducted in a virtual environment based on Moodle, with a student-centred educational model which includes a detailed planning of learning activities. Our experience indicates that this subject is highly motivating for students and the virtual environment facilitates competencies development

Evolution and implementation of CDIO initiatives at ETSII-UPM

The School of Industrial Engineering at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (ETSII-UPM) has been promoting student-centred teaching-learning activities, according to the aims of the Bologna Declaration, well before the official establishment of the European Area of Higher Education. Such student-centred teaching-learning experiences led us to the conviction that project based learning is rewarding, both for students and academics, and should be additionally promoted in our new engineering programmes, adapted to the Grade-Master structure. The level of commitment of our teachers with these activities is noteworthy, as the teaching innovation experiences carried out in the last ten years have led to the foundation of 17 Teaching Innovation Groups at ETSII-UPM, hence leading the ranking of teaching innovation among all UPM centres. Among interesting CDIO activities our students have taken part in especially complex projects, including the Formula Student, linked to the complete development of a competition car, and the Cybertech competition, aimed at the design, construction and operation of robots for different purposes. Additional project-based learning teamwork activities have been linked to toy design, to the development of medical devices, to the implementation of virtual laboratories, to the design of complete industrial installations and factories, among other activities detailed in present study. The implementation of Bologna process will culminate at ETSII-UPM with the beginning of the Master’s Degree in Industrial Engineering, in academic year 2014-15. The program has been successfully approved by the Spanish Agency for Accreditation (ANECA), with the inclusion of a set of subjects based upon the CDIO methodology denominated generally “INGENIA”, linked to the Spanish “ingeniar” (to provide ingenious solutions), also related etymologically in Spanish with “ingeniero”, engineer. INGENIA students will live through the complete development process of a complex product or system and there will be different kind of projects covering most of the engineering majors at ETSII-UPM.

Facilitating the creation of interactive multi-device Learning Objects using an online authoring tool

Learning Objects facilitate reuse leading to cost and time savings as well as to the enhancement of the quality of educational resources. However, teachers find it difficult to create or to find high quality Learning Objects, and the ones they find need to be customized. Teachers can overcome this problem using suitable authoring systems that enable them to create high quality Learning Objects with little effort. This paper presents an open source online e-Learning authoring tool called ViSH Editor together with four novel interactive Learning Objects that can be created with it: Flashcards, Virtual Tours, Enriched Videos and Interactive Presentations. All these Learning Objects are created as web applications, which can be accessed via mobile devices. Besides, they can be exported to SCORM including their metadata in IEEE LOM format. All of them are described in the paper including an example of each. This approach for creating Learning Objects was validated through two evaluations: a survey among authors and a formal quality evaluation of 209 Learning Objects created with the tool. The results show that ViSH Editor facilitates educators the creation of high quality Learning Objects.